The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday issued its first permit to build commercial nuclear reactors in nearly 10 years to a subsidiary of Bill Gates’ TerraPower for a planned 345 MW plant near the site of a decommissioned coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Unit 1 of the Kemmerer Power Plant will be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the US, TerraPower said in a statement, and supply power to PacifiCorp’s gridwith an expected completion in 2030.
The NRC said that after a streamlined mandatory hearing process, it authorized its Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation to issue the permit, “after staff’s review of the Kemmerer application is adequate to make the necessary safety and environmental regulatory findings. Staff expects to issue the permit soon.”
Unit 1 of the Kemmerer Power Plant is being developed through the Energy Department’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, TerraPower said. It uses a design called Natrium, a “sodium-cooled fast reactor with a proprietary molten salt-based energy storage system,” which TerraPower jointly developed with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
The storage element can increase system output by up to 500 MW of power when needed “to keep base output stable, ensuring consistent reliability and can ramp up quickly when demand peaks,” TerraPower said.
TerraPower and Meta announced an agreement last month that Meta would help finance the development and receive power from two new Natrium units with 690 MW of capacity, with delivery as early as 2032. Meta also secured power rights for up to six other Natrium units with a total of 2.1 GW of capacity with delivery scheduled for 2035.
The NRC issued its safety assessment for TerraPower’s permit in Decemberfinding that the preliminary design and analysis of Kemmerer Power Plant Unit 1 was “consistent with guidance and is sufficient and meets applicable regulatory requirements” for issuance of a permit, although staff noted “some remaining areas of uncertainty in the design and analysis of KU1.”
This uncertainty is acceptable under NRC regulations, according to the report, “which state that the expected design and analysis are preliminary and that outstanding safety issues can be resolved through [research and development] efforts.”
“Staff also note that… [a permit] does not constitute Commission approval of any design feature unless specifically requested and incorporated into the permit; such approval was not requested in the application,” the NRC wrote, adding that this information may be left for further consideration in the final safety analysis report.
